Don't shoot the messenger

Although I am very happy to be back in Britain after three years, I have hardly been rejoicing. Failing intervention by the Attorney-General, I expect to appear in court soon facing possible imprisonment for breaching the Official Secrets Act.

But the real criminals in this affair are the British Government and the intelligence services. The Government has a duty to uphold the law. It cannot simply be ignored because crimes are carried out by friends of the Government.

In November 1999, I sent the Home Secretary Jack Straw detailed evidence of involvement by MI6 officers in a plot to murder Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. Although the assassination failed when attempted in 1996, innocent Libyan civilians were killed.

In a dossier I presented to Mr Straw, I included the names of those who had also been briefed about the plot within MI5. Mr Straw merely indicated to journalists in off-the-record briefings that he was 'looking into the matter'. Robin Cook labelled my evidence 'pure fantasy', an assertion now contradicted by an MI6 report posted on the Internet last February.

When presented with this compelling evidence these very senior Ministers should, of course, have called in the police immediately. We would never countenance two police officers conspiring to murder a criminal. Why should we accept that two MI6 officers could do the same to Colonel Gaddafi?

This week, I will be writing to both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service asking them to investigate the role of the Government in this case. As part of any inquiry, Special Branch would have to have unfettered access to Government discussions about my case. Should the Government frustrate this process, it would lay itself open to accusations of either obstructing or perverting the course of justice. And what has Sir Stephen Lander, now head of MI5, done to protect the reputation of the organisation he runs?

When I joined MI5, I was told it obeyed the law and always had the utmost respect for civil liberties. So inevitably I am left wondering why Sir Stephen did not perform his clear public duty and call in Special Branch to investigate the Gadaffi plot as soon as he realised that MI6 did not have Ministerial authorisation to plot to assassinate a foreign head of state. In August 1998, I also pointed out publicly that MI5 had evidence of the plot on its file SF754-0168.

Sir Stephen is, sadly, a man who keeps quiet about crimes committed by MI6 but stands by while a properly-motivated whistleblower is persecuted. I fear he has already connived in misleading the Government over MI5's failure to prevent an IRA attack on the British mainland in 1993, a matter I will seek to have disclosed at my forthcoming trial.

The Government's failure to ensure that two MI6 officers are brought to justice for their part in planning a murder is what I would expect of despots and dictators. It is not only an abuse of power. It is an insult to those who respect the rule of law, including the vast majority of the British public.

It is corruption. It is sleaze. And sleaze was where New Labour came in as a supposed breath of fresh air after the Conservatives had grown corrupt.

The Attorney General's office is still determined to prosecute the editor of Punch magazine early next month for claiming that institutional failures in the intelligence services failed to prevent the IRA bombing of Bishopsgate in the City of London in 1993. That was the biggest terrorist attack on the British mainland in history.

This all contrasts remarkably with the attitude taken towards former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson. After alleging impropriety in the intelligence services to the Sunday Times in 1996, he was the beneficiary of an immunity deal which saw him receiving a substantial sum of taxpayers' money and help in finding a new job in return for future silence.

This tragic episode is fast becoming British Watergate. Until Nixon was exposed, the American public was generally prepared to tolerate some secrecy surrounding the work of government because they trusted their elected representatives. But our Ministers should not forget that once their president had been impeached, Americans were no longer prepared to take that government on trust. As a consequence, the American people have now won the most liberal freedom of information policy in the world. Dumb commentators still suggest glibly that 'secrets must remain secret'. That argument is an affront to the public's right to know how our intelligence services operate on their behalf. Secrecy and the ludicrous legislation which props it up is inimical to freedom of expression.

These naive commentators do not have the wit or intelligence to realise that they undermine the proper ability of the press to hold the most secretive and unaccountable areas of government up to public scrutiny. If people want to live in a country where the intelligence services work in absolute secrecy with no respect for the rule of law or basic human rights, they should go and live in Libya, Iraq or Iran.

As the head of Britain's intelligence services, Tony Blair now has a simple - and honourable - choice. To expose the truth. My message to the servants of the state remains simple. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't let MI6 get away with murder.